Sajid Javid: I will in a moment. In line with what Mr Speaker said earlier, I will take a few interventions, but I want to make sure that as many Members as possible get the opportunity to contribute today. However, I will come back to the hon. Lady.
A century ago, the then US President, William Howard Taft, described anti-Semitism as a “noxious weed”. Unfortunately, in recent years, this weed has found fertile soil in the corners of social media and political activism in our country, especially those cloaked in anti-Israel and anti-Zionist sentiment. Criticisms of actions taken by the Israeli Government are one thing, but for many, it is simply a mask for anti-Jewish, racist sentiment. In general, Britain can be proud of its peaceful and tolerant environment for Jews, but that is in danger of changing. Across Europe and the United States, anti-Semitism is on the rise.
Last year, the Community Security Trust recorded 1,346 anti-Semitic incidents in the UK—the highest on record. These incidents include, for example, graffiti at a synagogue in Leeds, social media abuse of Jewish figures—not least, Members of Parliament—and Jewish schoolchildren being physically and verbally attacked on a school bus. In some ways, this type of explicit anti-Semitism is easier to recognise and to tackle head on—the hate preachers, the extremist mosques, and far-right and far-left groups—but much more of it is oblique. A search on Google produces more than half a million hits for “holocaust hoax”. Thousands more pages tell people that a greedy Otto Frank forged his daughter’s diary in a cunning scheme to try to make some money. Then there are the dinner party anti-Semites, self-regarding and respectable people who recoil at the accusation of racism but are quite happy to trot out modern takes on old tropes. In fact, this has become so pervasive that recent research by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, funded by the Community Security Trust and my Department, found that a shocking 30% of those surveyed believed in one or more anti-Semitic trope. Although a lot of that comes down to ignorance and the need for education, we cannot ignore the role that those in public life play in setting the right tone.